The breakup of a presidential encampment is dramatic. There are thirty minutes of elasticity between the time the vanguard begins to check out and the departure of the President. The red-brick front of the Hotel Texas was glistening with rain when it began. Newspaper reporters wearing crumpled rain slickers, carrying portable typewriters and suitcases were in the lobby queued up at the cashier’s window waiting to sign their overnight bills or pay them. Some had to report long-distance phone calls, and the telephone operators were requested to get the charges at once. The bellmen waited for service calls near the palm fronds. Texans lounged on the settees waiting for a final look at President John F. Kennedy.
Two Secret Service men had already checked out. They had packed the Presidential Seal, flags, and the President’s prosthetic chair, and sound equipment in a car and had started out from the Main Street side, asking the doorman, “Which way to the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike?” They were headed for the Trade Mart in Dallas to set these things up before Mr. Kennedy arrived. They had a run of thirty-six miles in rain. Twenty minutes were needed at the Trade Mart to set everything in order. Roy Kellerman, the special agent in charge, forgot to notify the Secret Service men at Dallas, who were waiting with an automobile at Love Field.
The corridors of the hotel were jammed with people in controlled panic. The three elevators—deducting one which must always wait at the President’s floor—were busy passing floors on the downward journey as operators listened to the knocking and said: “Next car, please.” There were sixty-eight persons assigned to fly the short trip on Air Force One and Air Force Two, and another fifty would fly the leased Pan American plane which would carry the press. Some of the Texas reporters and photographers pooled their cars and left in groups, swinging up the ramp to the turnpike in an effort to get to Love Field first.
The police had a problem in front of the hotel’s main entrance. A good part of the crowd which had laughed and cheered with the President in the parking lot was now on both sides of Eighth Street. The local police, assisted by state troopers, had to get them back on the far side, and no one wanted to move. The mounted men urged their horses up onto the sidewalk and moved them sidewards against the mass of citizens. Some had to squeeze between the bumpers of limousines already waiting. Men and women checking out of the hotel came out the door and went back in to try leaving by the Main Street entrance.
The Secret Service walkie-talkies were busy on several floors. One, from the Will Rogers Suite on the thirteenth, called the men standing in front of 850 to announce that the Vice-President was on his way down to see the President for a moment. Other people, worried by the clock, used the stairways to hurry down to the lobby. Doors to many rooms were ajar. The occupants ransacked drawers and closets to make certain that nothing was forgotten in the packing. Others yelled: “What time do we leave?” and the answer was: “Now. Now.”
Negro women in neat white aprons stood openmouthed in all the corridors. They had cleaned rooms and made beds for years, but none had seen anything like this. One or two patrons paused to drop a dollar tip; others packed, dressed, and ready, tried the switchboard once more to get a line to home or the office.
An elevator opened at the eighth floor and two Secret Service men, noting the red light over it, blocked it. Inside was Vice-President Johnson with his sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Birge Alexander. They had never met a President of the United States, and Lyndon had promised. In the summer of 1959, they had thought that the Democratic Party might nominate a Texan. Kennedy had beaten their Lyndon, and many voters in the Lone Star State felt that the Democratic ticket was “wrong-side-up.” The nominee should have been the man with the broadest political experience: Lyndon Baines Johnson, the youngest majority leader in the history of the United States Senate. The polished, almost foppish Kennedy, they felt, was no more than the junior Senator from Massachusetts and should have been happy with the vice-presidential nomination.
After the election, Johnson spent considerable time discouraging the residue of rancor. He told his intimate friends that he tried to make a good run for the nomination, but in his heart he knew that he would never be President of the United States. A week before this day in Texas, he had dinner with friends at Chandler’s Restaurant in Manhattan. Between the lobby and the bar stood a screen made of squares. Each one held a portrait, cased in glass, of the Presidents of the United States.
Johnson left his table and his friends to pluck his glasses from a breast pocket and examine the screen. The owner, Mr. Louis Rubin, saw the Vice-President crouching, looking from one glass face to another, and he smiled and pointed to the empty glass square next to the youthful head of John F. Kennedy. “When will I put your picture in there?” he said. The Vice-President straightened up, and anger darkened his face. “Never,” he said. “You’ll never see it.” His loyalty to his President was so absolute that it was the subject of jokes among Kennedy’s assistants.
The Secret Service opened the door to 850, and Johnson led his relatives inside. Kennedy, who was chatting with O’Donnell, turned and hurried to shake hands. Johnson presented the couple, uttered a cheerful word or two, and started to back out, motioning the Alexanders to follow him. Kennedy appeared to be elated. “Lyndon,” he said, following the guests to the door, “I know there are two states we’re going to carry in 1964—Texas and Massachusetts.” The Vice-President grinned and said: “Oh, we’ll do better than that.” There was a gentle irony in this, because, until this moment, Kennedy had never stated that he wanted Johnson on the ticket with him again. “We’re going to carry” was an encouraging phrase for the Vice-President, and he turned and left, reminding his sister that he and Lady Bird had to hurry so that they would be in the motorcade before the President.
Mr. Kennedy ordered all visitors to be kept out of the suite. He started to yank off his tie. Johnson’s presence reminded the Chief Executive of Yarborough. It was an irritant which he could no longer countenance. As he started toward his bedroom, he told O’Donnell to phone Larry O’Brien and to tell him that Senator Yarborough would ride beside Johnson today, even if the Senator had to be shoved into the automobile. “I want him in that car!” the President said.
He went into the bedroom. George Thomas was ready. The suitcases were on the double bed. Mr. Kennedy changed to a blue-striped shirt, a solid blue silk tie, and a fresh lightweight gray and blue suit. In the other bedroom, Mrs. Kennedy readjusted her coiffure and her hat, and took one more glance out the window. The skies seemed to be clearing and reclouding. She hoped that the bubbletop would be on that car today.
In the corridor, that question was propounded for the final time. The special phone rang. It was Special Agent Winston G. Lawson in Dallas. He asked to speak to the boss, Roy Kellerman. The weather appeared to be clearing at Love Field, Lawson said, although it was still “drizzling.” Kellerman, in charge of the Secret Service, did not want to make the decision. “One moment,” he said, “and I will check with you one way or the other.”
He went into 850 and asked Mr. O’Donnell. The President’s assistant had concluded his conversation with O’Brien, in which he advised Larry to go the limit with Yarborough. “Mr. O’Donnell,” said Kellerman, “the weather—it is slightly raining in Dallas. We have predictions of clearing up. Do you want the bubbletop on the President’s car, or should we remove it for this parade to the Trade Mart?”
O’Donnell glanced around the room to make certain that he had left no memos. “If the weather is clear,” he said, “and it is not raining, have that bubbletop off.” Kellerman thanked him. It was not the unequivocal response he desired, but it was obvious that the Kennedy group, given a choice, would rather have the top off than on. He returned to the phone and repeated O’Donnell’s words verbatim.
It was still “iffy,” but Lawson read the message correctly. He would leave the top off unless, at the last moment, a downpour made it advisable to put it on. It was never a simple matter to put it on or take it off. The car was a special 1961 Lincoln Continental, accommodating seven passengers: a chauffeur and agent, two persons on jump seats, and three on the rear leather seat. The bubbletop was in four pie-shaped sections and covered the area from the back of the rear seat to the front windshield.
The bottom sections had to be bolted and screwed to the car. There was a metal bar, attached to the rear of the driver’s seat, which stood fifteen inches above the headrest. This was used when the President and a visiting Chief of State wished to stand, holding on to the bar, to respond to crowds. On the back of the trunk, at the bumper, were two fixed stirrups with metal bars on the trunk so that agents could hold on when the car moved at speed.
The two jump seats were three inches lower than the rear seat at the lowest position. The President, by flexing a small metal arm, could lift the back seat ten and a half inches. However, after several experiments, he decided that the bottom position, which placed him and his wife a little more than three inches above their guests in the jump seats, was about right.
Lawson told his men to leave the top off.
The capital was always serene, impassive, and majestic from the streets. The broad boulevards, spokes in an unbalanced wheel; the huge edifices of granite; the bronze figures of statesmen, standing to declaim, sitting to ponder, riding to battle on horses green with the droppings of pigeons; the fountains arcing iridescent in the morning sun; the feel of history under the pedestrian’s foot; the saucer of green hills curling away from this American Mecca; this Parthenon; this Vatican City; and, withal, the strained dignity of the courtesan who is not aware that she has lost her soul.
The motivation of the city of Washington has always remained the same: self-righteousness. The American posture, which pours from this heart through the provincial arteries, is one of nobility, giving away money, merchandise, and counsel to a retarded world. Behind the granite façades of many public buildings, the imperturbable regality is lost; the outside and the inside have no more relation to each other than the dignity of an opera house lobby has to the turmoil onstage.
This was a routine day. The United States Supreme Court was not prepared to turn the country from its natural course with a shattering decision; Congress, in an hour, would convene, listening to two well-paid chaplains invoke the favor of God on this nation above all others; the President pro tem of the Senate would step down to permit the new junior Senator from the State of Massachusetts, the Honorable Edward Kennedy, to sit behind the gleaming gavel and make parliamentary rulings; the Oval Office of the White House was empty, but the East and West Wings would continue to grind out the wordy projects of new laws, speeches major and minor, the hand-scripted invitations to a gala, the stereotyped responses to missives from the citizens, the publicity handouts to the few journalists who were not with the President; the logging of phone calls to and from Texas; the situation reports from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State.
The gentlemen sat around the spacious and darkly subdued office waiting. They had been summoned by the Attorney General of the United States and, when he burst through the door with an assortment of papers in his hand, they got to their feet. Robert F. Kennedy waved them back down, and the toothy smile was turned on. This was the most energetic of the Kennedys, the most belligerent and, in the same set of scales, the least tactful. He was the President’s brother, campaign manager, buffer, and hatchetman.
In childhood, it was John who protected Robert. The older brother, Joseph, who “minded” the family when the parents left the house, was a martinet not above administering corporal punishment to the younger members of the family. In these situations, Robert—younger, smaller, weaker—hid in the dark at the head of the stairs as John diverted Joe’s attention and sometimes took the blows intended for Robert. The situation was now reversed. Robert, as Attorney General, often diverted attention from his brother and faced the wrath of the public himself.
The President felt that Robert would make a good Attorney General, but he found little support for the appointment, even among his followers. It amounted to arrogant nepotism and, one night in Georgetown, the young President-elect said: “I think the best way to announce Bobby’s appointment is to wait until late some night right here and then go out front and look up and down the street. If nobody is around, I will take my brother by the hand and lead him out on the porch and shout: ‘I appoint my brother as Attorney General of the United States!’”
As the legal counsel to the nation, Robert Kennedy had little experience in courts and even less in the field of political compromise, but the President was pleased with his work and more than pleased. He appointed Robert to the National Security Council, where the secret decisions were made; he sought “Bobby’s” advice in all matters and often listened to propositions from outsiders only to ask the rhetorical question: “What does Bobby think about it?”
As counsel to the McClellan Committee, young Robert fought organized crime, an appellation pinned to those (usually of Italian ancestry) who had permanent committees and boards of directors in many cities for the enrichment of all in the fields of vice, narcotics, and gambling. He had also applied himself to the exposure of union racketeers, notably James Riddle Hoffa of the Teamsters Union. Exposure turned out to be easy, with the assistance of renegade witnesses and the cameras of television, but conviction in court was seldom achieved and the devising of new statutes by the committee was lax and ineffectual.
As Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation belonged to his Department of Justice. This opened a new avenue of investigative procedure, a broad one encompassing the use of thousands of trained agents in many cities across the land. The free use of this weapon, Kennedy found, was blocked by the massive presence of John Edgar Hoover, who had been prosecuting interstate felons since 1924, the year before Bobby was born.
Hoover had enjoyed the confidence and respect of presidents from the administration of Calvin Coolidge onward. Now, in advanced years, the old tiger and the young wildcat were in the same hunting preserve. One of the least appreciated of Kennedy’s virtues was his habit of stepping on the polished shoes of other public servants. In some cases, fear of the President kept the victims from protesting. In others, notably Hoover and the FBI, the schism became a gaping wound, unhealing and suppurating.
The Attorney General wanted to take charge of the FBI. Hoover did not relish being “summoned” by an inexperienced ”boy.” In this contretemps, John F. Kennedy could not help his brother. Hoover was a national hero; his FBI had never been tainted by scandal and permitted no encroachment by other departments. John F. Kennedy, elected president by a margin of only 118,000 votes out of more than 70 million cast, could not risk the wrath of the people by retiring Hoover. The wildcat was stuck with the tiger.
This morning, Bobby was making one of his periodic moves designed to keep a needle in the hide of Hoover. He had a group called the Organized Crime Committee. Some were federal prosecutors, beholden to the Attorney General. Others were officials in other offices. A few were investigators and public relations men. Their work was to expose and prosecute the American Mafia, or Cosa Nostra. This, of course, was high on the agenda of the FBI, but Robert Kennedy hoped to take the play away from his own FBI.
On the surface, the Department of Justice and the FBI worked well together. The attitude of subordination was maintained by Hoover, and the departmental amenities flowed in memoranda between the wings of the big doughnut-shaped building on Pennsylvania Avenue. But, in law, Robert Kennedy could issue unpalatable orders and force their execution.
This was the second of two meetings of the Organized Crime Committee. United States attorneys had been called in from many parts of the country to attend. Robert Kennedy’s desire was to exploit a break in the Cosa Nostra—an FBI prisoner named Joseph Valachi, a minor member of the Mafia group, had secretly revealed more about his organization than the authorities had known. He had, under FBI persuasion, named names and places and events. In return, the Bureau had promised to protect his life, even if they had to arrange security in a federal prison.
Kennedy sat behind his desk, dropped the papers on the blotter, and removed his jacket. He loosened his tie from its collar moorings and unsnapped his cuff links and rolled his sleeves up. Before him was a long list of members of the Cosa Nostra who lived in many cities. Now he wanted to know what these federal prosecutors and assistants had been able to do with the information he had given them.
The city of Washington was bland with a cool majesty of purpose. The sun was strong now. The morning work, from Pentagon to Post Office to Patents, was orderly and routine. Perhaps it seemed dull because this was a time for football games and chilly air, a hoar frost on the grass and invitations to the galas of the social season. In hundreds of offices, workers sipped coffee and wondered whether it would be worthwhile—this being Friday—to take the family to the shore once more.
The dark sedan made the turn off Harry Hines Freeway and onto the small service road. Detective R. M. Sims did the driving, and he pulled by the main entrance to the Trade Mart and stopped it in the east parking lot. Captain Will Fritz, head of the Homicide Division of the Dallas Police Department, was not assigned to murder today. He and the two men who drove with him, Sims and E. L. Boyd, had nothing to do from 10:15 A.M. until 2:30 P.M. except watch a table.
Fritz was a big bifocaled man with hyperthyroid eyes who wore a cowboy hat. He was shrewd as captain of Homicide, but he had the potential pensioner’s attitude of obeying the boss without question. No one ever found fault with Will Fritz, because the captain lived by the book. He was not a man for browbeating prisoners or bludgeoning confessions from the sullen. It is characteristic that his office on the third floor at police headquarters had walls of glass.
He walked back to the front of the Trade Mart with his men and, once inside, stood behind the President’s table to study the layout. He saw the flowers, the speakers table spreading across two thirds of the Trade Mart, the solid ranks of long tables with their snowy tablecloths, the waiters, armed with knives and forks, dogtrotting from the kitchen to the tables, the overseers, who shouted orders to the waiters, the green and yellow parakeets, excited by the noise, flitting from rail to rail on the overhead crosswalks, the fountain, swelling to show the color red, receding into a pale blue.
Agents Grant and Stewart saw Fritz and came over to brief the Dallas cops. Fritz was to safeguard the President’s table. He knew almost every person of note in the Dallas area; he also knew most dangerous persons at sight. If Sims could flank one side of the table, and Boyd the other, then Captain Fritz would be free to cross behind the table to assist either of them. Of course, Secret Service men would also be assigned to the head table.
The captain noted that directly behind him was the main entrance. He asked the Secret Service who would meet the motorcade out front, who would escort the presidential party inside, and who would clear the big lobby before the arrival. “Now,” said Fritz, “when he gets inside, how does he approach this head table. From which side?”
The Secret Service answered all the questions and gave the police little orange buttons for their lapels. Robert Stewart said that the back and sides of the building were already secured. Local policemen were all over the place, under Deputy Chief M. V. Stevenson, and, except for a possible emergency delivery of more bread and rolls, no one would enter the block-and-a-half-long building except by the canopy at the front. The men stationed there, uniformed motorcycle police and Secret Service agents, would funnel the guests through the main door into the lobby where, as a matter of course, they would be properly screened by ticket-takers, local politicians, and more agents.
As the guests passed the back of the head table to find their places in the gigantic room, it would be up to Fritz and his men to keep them outside the roped area of the head table. No one, even if properly identified, was to be permitted to pluck a flower from one of the many vases at the table nor to leave an object or package for anyone.
The front of the head table would be guarded exclusively by Secret Service agents from the President’s party, but Stewart wanted to make certain that the flanks and the rear were secure at all times. He asked Fritz if he and his men had experience with explosives. The captain nodded. Stewart asked if Fritz would make a complete inspection of the entire head table and under it in about forty-five minutes and again when the word reached the Trade Mart that the President was five minutes away.
Fritz said yes. The assignment was going to be easy. There was a shout from the lobby and a few of the men ran out. Lieutenant Jack Revill of the Dallas Subversive Unit, had been checking Trade Mart merchants in and out with the assistance of Detective Roy Westphal. It was Westphal who decided to frisk a merchant at random and found a small Cuban flag in his pocket. This had led to a complete fanning of the merchant, who protested. He insisted that he was anti-Castro. Chief Stevenson came running and settled the matter by reminding the merchant that the Dallas Council had just passed a special ordinance about signs, picketing, protests, thrown objects, and threatening language during the visit of the President. This would include anything, he said, which might tend to embarrass or intimidate the President. The merchant would have to surrender the flag temporarily or leave the building. He gave up the little banner.
Up at Elm and Houston, Officer W. B. Barnett was a lonely man. He had nothing to do but stand in uniform against a wall and try to keep the drizzle from soaking him. Barnett was a traffic cop. Today he was to stand at the corner where the motorcade would make its final turn. His superior, Captain Lawrence, had told the traffic men that they were to divert all traffic five or ten minutes before the motorcade passed, and they were to scout the crowds and the windows overhead for thrown objects.
Barnett stood on the corner opposite the School Book Depository, looking down at the railroad overpass, where donkey engines, small and energetic, shoved strings of freight cars back and forth. A man came over from the School Book Depository, trotting in the rain, and asked the police officer what time the motorcade would be passing. Barnett asked him why he wanted to know. “Because,” he said, “our building is full of people who would like to see President Kennedy go by.”
“Tell him to come out around 11:45,” the cop said. The stranger dogtrotted back to the front entrance, and Barnett walked toward the statue of Joseph Dealey to get a better look at the old red brick building. All the windows were closed.
At police headquarters, Lieutenant D. H. Gassett strode down the cross-hall on the third floor and entered the dispatch room. The big antennae on top of the municipal building would carry heavy traffic today. At 10 A.M. three operators had reported for duty. Two were on Channel One of KKB 364, and one was on Channel Two. Gassett went over the situation with them once more, explaining that the two operators on Channel One, facing each other with the console between them, would handle the heavy traffic. The operator on Two had a separate console and faced the others. There was to be no foul-up, men reporting in were to do so by number, and Gassett would tolerate no friendly conversation. The motto was: “Get ’em on, take the message, get ’em off.”
As he left the room, Lieutenant Gassett whacked one of the time stamps. There were three, one for each operator, but they never agreed on the time of day. One operator, looking at the little clock from a low stool, read the time one way; another, sitting high or leaning over the clock, saw it a minute later or a minute earlier. It was odd, Gassett thought, that in a business where time was so important, that the clocks of the three radio operators, if stamped simultaneously, would probably be a minute apart.
At the Sheraton Hotel, crouching in the shadow of the huge Southland Life Building in downtown Dallas, the President’s communications headquarters was now complete. Anyone who called in from the parade route, or the plane, could be hooked in with the White House in Washington or, for that matter, to anyone in the world. This was the most sophisticated telephone equipment to be found anywhere. No conversation would go through the Sheraton switchboard; no operator could listen because there were voice scrambler attachments on both ends. A master sergeant, who was also a master electrician, sat in a small room and said: “Ready in Dallas” and asked for a few tests.
The code names for people and places were before him. President Kennedy was Lancer; Mrs. Kennedy was Lace; Vice-President Johnson was Volunteer; Mrs. Johnson was Victoria; the White House was Castle; Air Force One was Angel; the President’s car was SS-100-X; Chief of the Secret Service James Rowley was Domino; the LBJ Ranch was Volcano; The Bagman was Satchel; the Pentagon was Calico, and the FBI was Cork.
It seemed involved, but Colonel George McNally and his communications men made it function almost instantaneously. The President, in his car, could lift a phone and say “Lancer to Lyric” and, in a breath, his daughter Caroline, at class in the White House, would be on the phone. The Vice-President, smiling to crowds, might hold a phone to his ear and say: “Volunteer to Daylight” and be talking to Secret Service Agent Jerry Kivett at the ranch hundreds of miles away.
At the moment, the sergeant at the switchboard was listening to Colonel Swindal, command pilot of Air Force One, call in from Carswell that he was ready to go and had cleared flight plans with Love Field, Dallas. The long checks had been run through by the crew; the fan jets had been tested; fuel was aboard, and the colonel had alerted the brass at Carswell that the President of the United States was expected at the base in half an hour. An honor guard was sent to the entrance gate.
Not all communications were as wrinkle-free. Mr. Jack Ruby, a worn face in a disorderly apartment, had dialed his sister’s number. He could hear it ring and he knew she must be home because she had been ill. At last the receiver in Apartment I at 3929 Rawlins Street, Dallas, was lifted, and a small voice said hello. Mr. Ruby did not say: “This is Jack.” He assumed she recognized her brother’s voice. He was upset, he said, over a full-page ad in the Dallas News. Mrs. Eva Grant said she was sorry, but she had not seen it.
Her brother began to shout. She should look on page fourteen; it was awful. It asked the President of the United States a lot of insolent questions. Worse, it was signed by Bernard Weissman. This sounded Jewish. Mr. Ruby was a Jew. Eva Grant, his sister, was a Jew. All the difficult tenement growing up in Chicago was not enough; Adolf Hitler was not enough; now a Jew had to get fresh with the President.
“He’s a son of a bitch,” said Mr. Ruby. “The News was wrong to accept the ad.” Jack knew a lot of nice guys in the ad department at the News and he was going to ask them about this so-called Weissman. Who was he? Where had he come from?
Mrs. Grant listened. She was too ill to argue or to soothe ruffled feelings. Of her brothers and sisters, this one was strange. He had never married, and now he was in the middle years, talking about exercising in the YMCA, taking sauna baths, making a full-time hobby of being friendly to policemen, trying to run a brace of cheap nightclubs with strippers and dirty filthy masters of ceremonies who seldom heeded Mr. Ruby’s warning to “clean up them jokes—especially the ones with the Jewish dialect.”
The listening continued. Lately, the conversations between the two had been one-sided. Once, when Eva and Jack were full partners in the nightclub business, she had been shrill and inexhaustible and she kept track of every dollar that came in or went out. But they had bounced from one place to another, always failing or tempting failure, always a step ahead of the bill collectors, trying to fight competition which was using “amateur stripteasers,” which seemed to draw more male customers and heavier drinkers than the professionals. Now the woman who, perhaps was more mother than sister, more hamisher than Jack, was tired.
Tuesday morning—three days ago—he stopped in, not to ask her how she felt after hospitalization and an operation, but to show her a newspaper photograph of President John F. Kennedy and his son John. The more Jack Ruby studied the photo, the more emotional he became. “That man,” he had said, choking, “doesn’t act like a President. He acts like a normal everyday man with a family.”
Mr. Ruby seldom permitted anyone to get off a telephone easily. He had phoned the Dallas Times Herald, he said, and they told him that they had refused the ad. That, thought Mr. Ruby, was class. Further, he thought that the ad should not have been addressed to “Mr. Kennedy.” They might at least have called him “Honorable Mr. President.” At least, Mrs. Grant was small and middle-aged and patient.
He had phoned the News and, after making certain that he had a minor advertising executive and not an editor, had asked: “Where the hell do you get off taking an ad like that? Are you money hungry or something?” Mr. Ruby groused a little more and then told his sister: “If that guy is a Jew they ought to whack the hell out of him.”
In this, Mr. Ruby, average citizen, was crying aloud against the slurs and slanders which had smashed against his sensibilities in Chicago and in Dallas. This was his real gripe. His admiration for President Kennedy was genuine, but his fear of being a defensive Jew was paramount. Sometimes, in the company of friendly goyim, he had to force a wry smile when he was patted on the back and referred to as a “white Jew.” Always Mr. Ruby had tried to be twice as nice to them as they were to him, but on occasion, especially in his strip joints, his temper deserted him and he lashed out with his fists, knocking a customer to the floor and kicking him down a flight of stairs. Or listening to one too many Jewish jokes and yanking the master of ceremonies off the tiny stage and hurling him across the floor.
Why did such a thing have to be signed “Weissman”? Why, Eva?
The President strode back into the sitting room and gave his wife a big smile. Yes, she was ready. Mary Gallagher had gone on ahead with Mrs. Lincoln and some of the others. Mr. Kennedy told the Secret Service he was ready to leave. The word was whispered through the partly open door of Suite 850, and it passed down the hall and men became even more alert. On the telephone near the fire hose went the final message. “Lancer is leaving the Hotel Texas.” And, as it always did, the message spread downstairs to men with walkie-talkies, to others on rooftops, to Carswell Air Force Base, to Washington, D.C., to Love Field in Dallas, to the communications center at the Sheraton, to interested parties in many places. Lancer was leaving.
Eighth Street was choked with vehicles and mounted policemen. The crowd had been herded to the far curb and, for a moment, a shaft of sunlight brightened the scene. The automobiles were in three rows—congressmen’s cars along the outer edge; press buses and staff cars in the middle; the big limousines rented for the President and his personal party at the curb.
Between the Secret Service follow-up car and Lyndon Johnson’s limousine, Larry O’Brien stood bareheaded, entreating Senator Ralph Yarborough to please get in the vice-presidential car. The reporters in the buses could not hear the conversation, but they could see O’Brien’s hands making the plea, and they could see the small silky wisps of red hair lift and fall on O’Brien’s head, and they could see Yarborough, studying the curb and shaking his head negatively.
Mr. O’Brien could not exert the blunt, brutal pressure which was available to the President. He tried persuasion and the Senator found that tack easy to resist by stating that nobody cared where he rode or with whom. To the contrary, O’Brien said softly, nodding toward the press bus with its array of eager faces pressed to the windows. Yarborough barely looked up. He knew that his presence in that car, or his absence, could be the big story in the nation’s press tomorrow morning.
It could darken the Kennedy triumph and hide it in shadow. The trip, thus far, had been bigger, warmer, friendlier than Kennedy had expected and was a surprise to the knowledgeable and conservative Governor. Now it was threatened by personal pique. The man to send to balm the raw sensitivities was not Lawrence O’Brien. The redhead was a peacemaker for those intelligent elements which did not set themselves against peace; he was a compromiser, a friend, a buddy, a favor-doer before becoming a favor-maker, a collie dog trotting along the perimeter of congressional sheep, urging the stragglers onward, bringing the wanderers back into line, looking to the shepherd in the White House for a compass heading aimed toward greener pastures for all.
But this was a personal vendetta. O’Brien was not a man to threaten. Mr. Kennedy might have sent Mr. Kenneth O’Donnell, who could have turned on his Humphrey Bogart peel of lips and who might have whispered: “You will get in that car, Senator, or you will wish you were dead. The President says that if we have to get a few guys to lift you up and toss you in the back seat, we’re to do it. Which way would you like to have it?” If Mr. Robert Kennedy had been in Texas, he would probably have summoned Yarborough to his presence yesterday, in San Antonio, and he might have said: “Senator, we are going to have unity in this goddamn party and we’re not going to have the boat rocked by you. We demand that you sit with the Vice-President on every occasion for the next two days. You don’t have to make love to him; just sit beside him so that you are not in the position of handing ammunition to the press. After we go back to Washington, if you want to continue your childish quarrel, go to it, but while my brother is in this state you and Lyndon and John Connally are going to smile like brothers. If you don’t, we think your support is too expensive for us and we may have to dump you.”
Yarborough desired to compromise with O’Brien. All right, he said, I won’t ride in the car but I’ll issue a statement. Larry O’Brien wagged his head no. The sun was back behind the billowing, slate sky, and the faces at the bus windows were less distinct. The Vice-President and Mrs. Johnson emerged from the hotel and, smiling at the applause, got into their car. Yarborough felt that the situation must be abrasive to the President to warrant all this attention, and with head down he said: “Well, if it means that much—.” O’Brien permitted himself a grin of relief.
The Johnsons were comfortable in their car, but it had no jump seats; two Secret Service men were in front; the Johnsons used most of the rear seat. Two cars ahead, they noticed a commotion. The Kennedys had discovered that their car also held but five passengers. The front seat had William Greer, Secret Service agent assigned to drive the President’s car, and Roy Kellerman, head of the Dallas office. Governor and Mrs. Connally were to ride with the Kennedys, but there was room for only one of them on the back seat.
The President was apologetic. Nellie Connally said it was understandable, and that her husband should ride with the President. For the short trip to Carswell, she would go back with the Johnsons, who were old friends. Up ahead, at the level of Main Street, the police motorcycle escort had started the assortment of explosions which always signified the imminence of departure. Mrs. Connally hurried back to squeeze in beside the Vice-President.
Sunlight flicked on bright and hot. Seth Kantor, a journalist, found the Eighth Street side too crowded for leaving the hotel. He hurried out the Main Street entrance and down the side street, looking for the press bus. A raincoat was on his arm, and his notes were clutched in his hand. People in the motorcade watched him step off the curb between cars and one foot came to rest in fresh manure. Mr. Kantor went down, left arm trying to break the fall, and the hand braced itself in the manure. Whatever earthy humor there is in such a situation is beyond analysis, but laughter swept the motorcade.
Two congressmen left their cars (Henry Gonzalez and Olin Teague) to help the reporter to his feet. They brushed his clothes and both observed that, journalistically, no matter where Kantor went, he managed to step in this substance. Malcolm Kilduff hurried to Kantor’s side to inform him that, unless he could find a way of diminishing the residual odor, he would have to ride on top of the press bus. Kilduff, assistant press secretary to Pierre Salinger, was the man in charge of the press on the Texas trip.
O’Brien escorted Yarborough to the Johnson car and helped him in beside the Vice-President. Under his breath, Lyndon Johnson muttered, “Fine” to O’Brien, and Mrs. Johnson, in the middle, turned a friendly smile to the Senator. On the far side of the seat, the door opened and Nellie Connally was trying to squeeze in. Gallantly, the Senator began to back out. Larry O’Brien saw the broad hips he had just assisted into the car backing out toward him. He glanced at Mrs. Connally in mute appeal. She, gracious and confused, backed out as O’Brien’s shoulder jammed the Yarborough hips back into the car. Mrs. Connally got out of the car, walked around the back, and got in the front seat between a policeman and Secret Service man Rufus Youngblood.
No one, except O’Brien and Johnson, seemed to comprehend this complex game of musical automobiles, but the Secret Service men nodded to each other from the back of the motorcade to the front, and the Fort Worth police stopped all traffic on Main and slowly began the run to Carswell. The crowd cheered, the Kennedys waved, and the excitement around the Hotel Texas died in a pall of blue smoke.
The people of Fort Worth were confused by the route chosen by Kellerman and O’Donnell. The direct way to Carswell would have been Route 20, the east-west freeway, between Trinity Park and Forest Park and then the residential section of Arlington Heights to White Settlement and the base. It was 10:40 A.M. and the decision-makers wanted to use a half hour, so the motorcade swept up Henderson Avenue and onto Jacksboro Highway in a north-northwesterly direction, although Carswell was west of the hotel, then a big swing left onto Ephriham Avenue, which melts into General Arnold Boulevard, passing the airport on the opposite side, to the south.
Someone in authority must have thought that this would be good exposure for the President, but, as the morning breeze cupped the ears of the riders, they saw but a thin rime of citizens standing on the curb. In the press bus, reporters saw a few shapely women out on the sidewalk in housecoats. One said: “Hustlers?” A second said: “This early?” Seth Kantor, looking ahead, saw a big automatic farm forklift at the side of the road with two men sitting high in the shovel waving to the Kennedys. They were old friends: Harry Rubin and George Levitan. Mr. Kantor had been married in Levitan’s house eleven years ago.
The sun, still tentative, seemed a bit more positive and flashed light and heat across the lush fairways of Rockwood Park and Shady Oaks. President Kennedy squinted at the sky and smiled. He was a man who liked to make his best showing, and a good portion of truculent, independent Dallas might come out on the streets to swell the attendance if he could have sunshine as an ally.
His wife, flicking the lower strand of dark hair back from her eyes, held onto the little pink hat and said the weather was warm for November. It was, but in this matter her husband would not attribute it to the vagaries of high and lows and unusual isobars. It was General Godfrey McHugh’s fault. Kennedy had asked him specifically to get a good advance reading on the weather, and McHugh had the pooling of several meteorologists at his command: the Dallas Weather Bureau; the Air Force; Carswell; Fort Worth; the national meteorological projection for all areas, issued at the observatory in Washington, and McHugh had come up with “cool.” It wasn’t cool; it was hot, and Mrs. Kennedy was now in cold-weather wool. Before noon, the temperature might climb to the seventies. If it did, the President’s temperature was going to climb higher, especially in the presence of Godfrey McHugh.